From dust unto dust inside of 20 years.


That's got to be something of a record for the demise of a minor league ballpark, not that Colonie's Heritage Park doesn't deserve to be leveled and forgotten as quickly as possible. Word is the county wants to put up a nursing home in its place. That seems far more appropriate for the former cornfield.


Because it was a lousy idea from the start -- erecting a minimalist ballpark for beer drinking and roaring fans out in the boonies next to a Shaker cemetery.


Can you imagine how far that project would have gotten if it had been proposed for next to, say, St. Agnes Cemetery?


Mother Ann had the last call after all, though, for an idea only politicians with access to gobs of public money could love for the long haul.


Back in the early '80s when it was built with $1.2 million in taxpayer dollars, there was an enormous cloud of arrogance hovering over Albany County, driven by the likes of former County Executive Jim Coyne who fancied himself a big sports promoter. The thrust of it was that we were players, ready and willing to support live professional baseball and we'd go anywhere to do it.


Just build that park and step aside so you don't get crushed by the crowds. Opening day on July 20, 1983, did see 9,211 buy tickets for the Albany-Colonie Athletics 7-7 tie with the Nashua Angels. Then there was the night, years later, when Ron Guidry threw some rehab innings for the Albany-Colonie Yankees. Cars were lined halfway down Albany Shaker Road toward the Northway for the night Louisiana Lightning took to the mound.


However, there were all the other nights professional baseball games were played there. Mostly it was quiet, very quiet. Quiet enough for Mother Ann Lee, founder of the Shaker movement in America, and 455 of her followers buried right next to parking lot.


The Athletics farm club lasted a year, and the Yankee double-A team nine years. When attendance for a Yankee farm club dropped off so abysmally that we lost the franchise to Connecticut, it should have been the tip-off to shut down Heritage Park and cut our losses. When a Yankees team can't make it here, what chance has any other franchise?


But no. Driven by a lack of any sense and the perpetual need for politicians to justify themselves, we continued to throw good money after bad. The pols at both the town of Colonie and Albany County levels, co-owners of Heritage Park, did this because they could.


It's a wonder the latest inhabitants, the unaffiliated Diamond Dogs, limped along for seven years before apparently gasping their last, at least for now. It should come as no surprise that the Dogs, who played a fairly rough brand of pro ball, pulled their own plug. Diamond Dog management can whine all it wants about alleged financial problems created by its former business manager as the cause of the team's failure, but lack of fans in the seats is what really sank the operation. You do not rank 16th out of a field of 17 teams in terms of attendance and stay in business long.


Although if the Diamond Dogs have anybody to point the finger at in terms of stabbing them in the back, that would be Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno. It is nothing short of an outrage that Bruno would spend $14 million in taxpayer dollars to create a ballpark and lure the ValleyCats Astros franchise to Troy in direct competition with the publicly subsidized Diamond Dogs. At the very least, part of the deal should have been buying out the Diamond Dogs and making Albany County and Colonie whole for their good-faith commitments to Heritage Park.


That cloud of political arrogance that used to hover over Albany and Colonie is certainly still alive and well.


It's merely drifted across the river. Contact Fred LeBrun at 454-5453.